Posted
by
Soulskill
on Wednesday January 29, 2014 @04:08PM
from the your-liver-is-made-to-order dept.

Lucas123 writes "In a report released today, Gartner predicts that the time is drawing near when 3D-bioprinted human organs will be readily available, an advance almost certain to spark a complex debate involving a variety of political, moral and financial interests. For example, some researchers are using cells from human and non-human organs to create stronger tissue, said Pete Basiliere, a Gartner research director. 'In this example, there was human amniotic fluid, canine smooth muscle cells, and bovine cells all being used. Some may feel those constructs are of concern,' he said. While regulations in the U.S. and Europe will mean human trials of 3D printed organs will likely take up to a decade, nations with less stringent standards will plow ahead with the technology. For example, last August, the Hangzhou Dianzi University in China announced it had invented the biomaterial 3D printer Regenovo, which printed a small working kidney that lasted four months. Apart from printing tissue, 3D printing may also threaten intellectual property rights. 'IP will be ignored and it will be impossible or impractical to enforce. Everything will change when you can make anything.' said John Hornick, an IP attorney."

Apart from printing tissue, 3D printing may also threaten intellectual property rights. 'IP will be ignored and it will be impossible or impractical to enforce. Everything will change when you can make anything.' said John Hornick, an IP attorney.

But I deserve to have more wealth than any ten thousand other people on this planet combined! I mean, maybe I actually invented it and maybe I just bought it from the sucker-- er, person who did. My handful of years of work should absolutely support me and my family indefinitely. Also, I shouldn't have to pay taxes because I'm so great.

IP lawyers just want their cut... they see a way to latch onto a copywritable item (the digital file) and say "when you print it, it's a copy". The closest corollary is finding a recipe for a cake and baking it. The baked cake is not a new copy of the recipe.

The baker followed the instructions of the recipe. The recipe is copywritable and the cake is not subject of the copyright.

If IP lawyers try to say otherwise, we have a bigger mess than the implications to 3d printing. It means that you can't follow any how-to's on the internet without paying a royalty each time you follow the steps. It means that the people who write recipe books get a cut every time you make a meal.

It's bullshit anyway. 3D printing doesn't "threaten" copyrights or patents. It may be true that people might be able to make patented gadgets for their own home use... but that's already legal. And has been, as far as I know, for 200+ years.

There is no reason to change the laws, because manufacturing patented products for profit without permission is already illegal anyway. I don't see how enforcement of THAT would be significantly more difficult than it is now.

As usual, it's the "I have a RIGHT to suck money out of you" people who are bitching about this. Too bad. They can't stop it, and they'd better not force changes in the laws. People are pissed off enough already.

It's bullshit anyway. 3D printing doesn't "threaten" copyrights or patents. It may be true that people might be able to make patented gadgets for their own home use... but that's already legal. And has been, as far as I know, for 200+ years.

This.

I can hand-carve Mickey Mouse figurines out of soap all day every day, and so long as I don't try to sell them, Disney can't do shit about it.

Actually, it isn't... but if it's really just for your private home use, it's unlikely that the person owning the patent would ever even know that you did it, let alone try to sue you for doing so. Still technically not legal, though.

Sadly no. Making patented gadgets for your own use is an infringement (both for making and for using). You're unlikely to get caught by the patent holder, but it's still not legal. Here's [gpo.gov] the relevant section of US code.

"Sadly no. Making patented gadgets for your own use is an infringement (both for making and for using)."

I stand corrected. I looked it up myself and you are correct.

There are however two recognized exceptions from case law. One (I don't have the citation handy) was for "determining the veracity and preciseness of the specification", and the other, from Roche Products v. Bolar Pharmaceutical, 733 F2d 858, 221 USPQ 937 (Fed. Cir. 1984). That one says there is an exception

"for the sole purpose of gratifying a philosophical taste, or curiosity, or for mere amusement"

So yes, if it is just to gratify your philosophical taste or curiosity, or for fun, it is still legal. Otherwise no, unless you are trying to compare the spec.

"Manufacturing for public sale to make a profit is easy to track, but tracking private use is nearly impossible."

For now. When it becomes possible to actually print a Ferrari from your desktop, the "nearly impossible" tracking of everything we do would also become possible, with literally dirt cheap sensors installed everywhere.

That's unless we pass stringent privacy laws to protect against NSA/Big Data-style surveillance of random individuals. Or maybe it'll be a losing battle, and whether you're an exhibi

Hornick's comments make no sense in biotech. Genes and cells are patented not organs. You can print organs with a 3D printer, not genes or cells. Cells already "print" themselves, and genes can be printed easily with a PCR machine.

Companies who engineer fluorescent proteins, for example, have patents on them. They seem to turn a profit despite the fact that there's nothing like DRM on them (DNA rights management I guess?)

I suppose people could patent the scaffolds that will be printed, but as

Apart from printing tissue, 3D printing may also threaten intellectual property rights. 'IP will be ignored and it will be impossible or impractical to enforce. Everything will change when you can make anything.' said John Hornick, an IP attorney.

How are IP attorneys like John Hornick supposed to earn a living when you can print anything you want in the future? This will have a devastating effect on our economy, because IP lawyers are among the most productive people in our entire society. Won't someone think of the lawyers???!!

They tried 3D printing a lawyer from a combination of cockroach, dung beetle, and rat cells. The resultant being immediately filed a cease and desist order. The researchers were unable to determine if this was a success, or whether the creature had the good of the world in mind.

We've "discovered" this material that is called Extra Celluar Matrix, which forms the scaffolding for organs. We can remove the organ's cells, leaving just this scaffolding. Then we can take a culture of cells from your own organ and use it to populate the scaffolding, resulting in an organ. .

3D printing an organ is a much more complicated process. The only advantage is it does not require a donor XCM. But here's the cool thing about XCM, it doesn't trip the immune system, and the organ's cells are yours, so there is no rejection.

Thanks for pointing all this out. Its true, 3D printing organs is a waste of time. You'd rather just grow them in vats, shcluff off the existing cells, and populate the organ with cells from the receiver.

The beauty of 3D printing organs is the ability to include all the auxiliary support systems and complex structures. Much of the technology being developed is also using the donor's own tissues and so it too does not trip the immune system.

I disagree with a lot of the parent's post, but this part is reasonably solved. When you decellularize an ECM, the vessel walls remain intact. Then you reseed with HUVECs (an endothelial cell line), and they tend to find their way back onto the old vessel walls to form a vasculature.

But you are absolutely right that the microarchitecture of the tissue is very, very significant to proper function.

While the ECM molecular components are conserved as you point out in another post, their distribution (e.g., how much collagen IV, matrix-embedded glycoproteins, etc.), stiffness, and microarchitecture vary quite a bit from species to species, organ to organ, and even individual to individual. And this radically affects the phenotype of the cells that you transplant on them. Both cancer and "normal" epithelial cells are known to change their motility, proliferation, and even polarization characteristics bas

They're talking about mixing human and animal tissue to capitalize on specific traits. This is engineered biological components--engineered humans. Not genetically engineered, but physically engineered, like engineered wood.

You can have your arm replaced with a majorly upgraded arm? Legs that can run so fucking fast...

They're talking about mixing human and animal tissue to capitalize on specific traits. This is engineered biological components--engineered humans. Not genetically engineered, but physically engineered, like engineered wood.

You can have your arm replaced with a majorly upgraded arm? Legs that can run so fucking fast...

Have they figured out the whole wiring issue?

I have the understanding that the reason we still use prosthetic limbs rather than cybernetic or organic replacements is because hooking up the nerves is a no-go.

I think DARPA has some ideas on direct nerve-electrode connection, though I think their current work on PROTO 2 is using a technique called Targeted Muscle Reinnervation, which AFAICT, is essentially rewiring the nerves to some muscle near the amputated limb and reading impulses off that with implanted myoelectric sensors.

3D printing may also threaten intellectual property rights. 'IP will be ignored and it will be impossible or impractical to enforce. Everything will change when you can make anything.' said John Hornick, an IP attorney."

Until we get devices like the Star Trek replicator [wikipedia.org], and there are materials even it can not produce, we will be restricted by the materials available to 3d printing. Try 3d printing a working CPU. It will be a very long time before we "can make anything".

I was using the "have the ability to" as the definition of "can" where you seem to be using "am allowed to by law" as the definition. For example, I "can" steal a car but I am "not allowed to by law".

You could 'try' to steal a car, but with all the anti-theft systems and interlocks baked into the finished product, chances are unless you're a professional, you'd just end up breaking stuff.

Therein lies the rub - sure, a 3D printer you built yourself will only have the restrictions you put into it; but what about the mass market versions that most people (i.e., those not technically savvy enough to build or hack one) will be buying? Do you really think nobody's going to try to shoehorn some form of draconi

Go ahead and try to think of a way to compare a person's design with all the patents out there and decide if it infringes or not. Sorry but DRM is currently used to prevent use of unlicensed software or copying of copyright content. It has nothing to do with creating new content that is a copy. For example, anyone can record a copy-written song and distribute it. There is no DRM that can prevent that. That is exactly the same as creating a new design that happens to infringe on an existing patent.

So this is really more of a side-topic, but I thought I'd throw it out there. I guess I've always thought we would get closer to artificial/mechanical creatures as time and technology progressed. I'm wondering if the advent of 3D printing makes it possible for printing kidneys made of alloys that aren't rejected, and polymer membranes that filter the blood. Bio matter wears out, but functional artificial kidneys may not.

Then again, a human heart lasts an astonishingly long time (2-3 billion beats) and I don

Good luck buying a dialysis machine with an 80+ year service interval between repairs. Biological systems are actually rather robust, thanks to an extensive infrastructure of self-repair mechanisms. Bio matter may not be as strong as engineered materials, but it gets continuously replaced instead of fatiguing and degrading over time.

We've been dealing with artificial organs and transplanted organs for a very long time, I'm finding it difficult to figure out the real issue at hand here. It sounds to me that the 3D printing of organs would be using cells from the recipient, as in the person that needs a new liver would donate the stem cells for the new liver.

In the case of a person with "bad" DNA that might prevent using their own cells for the new organ, like type one diabetes, then cells from a suitable donor would be used. The diffe

I see no issues here that have not already been discussed when it comes to organ transplantation. What I'd like to see is someone try to figure out the liability issue of some person losing their house because someone else flew a 3D printed helicopter into it. Is the pilot solely at fault? Does the designer of the helicopter share in the blame? What part does the manufacturer of the 3D printer play?
There is already a slew of tort law and civil aviation regs out there coving the that.

Once it becomes cheap and easy for people to manufacture their own goods why the fuck would they buy expensive crap from big names.

The same question could be asked today, not in some vague future "when it becomes cheap." Why do people by Coca-Cola or Pepsi-Cola cans, when the generic brand fizzy brown stuff (that performs equally well in blind tests) costs half as much? Why do people buy designer clothes labels, made in the same overseas sweatshops to the same shoddy standards as the "budget" brands? A large portion of present-day economic spending goes to wasteful expense, paying for "big names" brands whose biggest expense is paying for more ads to convince people the "big names" brands are better. If economy and quality of goods was a major concern, today's store shelves would look very different.

A depressing question. Another example is: why would anyone buy a brand-name off-the-shelf drug (e.g. pain reliever) when 1 foot away there's a generic for half the price? Half the time you don't even have to do any math (re. milligrams & qty) to see that (if the shelf labels don't already give the unit price).

A couple of reasons:1) as it turns out, not all generics are the same as the drug it's a generic of. For example the generic for Wellbutrin XL releases the drug much faster over a 24 hour period then Wellbutrin XL does(32% over the first 2 hours for the generic vs 8% for the name brand). So it's the same active ingredient but not be released at the same rate. This means over the 24 hour period you aren't getting an even dose and towards the end of the 24 hours it may have no effect.

Conversely, a big brand has money to blow to trade advertising for actual product quality. An upstart product doesn't have a zillion dollar advertising campaign to subconsciously associate it with good things --- it must rely on actual reputation and word-of-mouth, against a large initial perceptual disadvantage. And, many generics do have their own reputation to uphold --- if Generic Store Brand X becomes generally reputed as shoddy, it's no less harmful than a big name brand ending up the same. But Store

"The same question could be asked today, not in some vague future "when it becomes cheap." Why do people by Coca-Cola or Pepsi-Cola cans, when the generic brand fizzy brown stuff (that performs equally well in blind tests) costs half as much? "

Not quite the comparison to make. The question should rather be phrased: Which would you rather drink, Coca-Cola or a beverage you juiced yourself from the fruits in your back yard?

You'd probably pick Coca-cola or some other store-bought drink if you don't have the ti

Once it becomes cheap and easy for people to manufacture their own goods why the fuck would they buy expensive crap from big names.

Why do people buy an MP3 collection when they could just hum their favorite songs all day?

For a long time, the commercial produced version will probably simply be better. And when there becomes a way of getting the same for free (i.e. piracy), then the laws will simply be cranked up to try and prevent it, just like we did in the wake of early file-sharing networks.

So, running a head that ejects some liquid on a surface isn't what an inkjet printer does? And running a very similar head that uses a laser to make powder adhere to a surface isn't what a laser priter does?

Anyway, now that I'm writing something, this thread is stupid. People are printing tissues in lab in machines that consist exactly of a liquid ejecting head that run over the 3 dimensions of the "printing" space. Just like a Makerbot. This tech solved some of the old problems of cells not assembling in t

I remember reading about one DRM system where a 3D printer will not print any files it gets unless they are signed and approved by an IP consortium. I am amazed this hasn't been put out yet

Why would 3D printer manufacturers want such a thing? Their business relies on selling as many printers as possible, and this would only hurt that effort. The only way this would happen is if governments mandate it, the way they did with copiers detecting counterfeiting. However, governments are notorious for being gla

What do you mean? What's going on with media players? Or computers? I haven't heard of any of them looking for "unauthorized" files; in fact, consumer pressure forced Apple to abandon DRM in the iTunes store.

Umm, ever use a DVD player? I'd bet that it was region encoded, so it won't play DVDs from outside of your part of the world. Theoretically, this is supposed to be a piracy prevention scheme.

in fact, consumer pressure forced Apple to abandon DRM in the iTunes store.

Yes, for music. But try downloading any videos from most reputable sources without DRM. And, regardless, this discussion is about whether something will be significantly inhibited in its marketing by some sort of DRM... the iTunes store clearly became popular with DRM in place -- without competition from major non-D

Umm, ever use a DVD player? I'd bet that it was region encoded, so it won't play DVDs from outside of your part of the world. Theoretically, this is supposed to be a piracy prevention scheme.

Ok, that's true, DVD and BD players do have some DRM measures like this. However, this is because the content is controlled by companies in an organization that devised these schemes, and required the player mfgrs to follow these DRM schemes in order to be licensed to make and sell these players.

'IP will be ignored and it will be impossible or impractical to enforce. Everything will change when you can make anything.'That's the fucking point!IP should die a quick horrible death instead of holding back inovation!

Chiba City....

Do you all really think that much of the rest of the world cares about US / European IP? Once other countries get the base technology down (and China, in this example, certainly has already done so) the copy part comes pretty quickly.

There is a fundamental philosophical barrier: Did you you successfully "transfer" your mind into that synthetic brain, or was your living brain murdered and a good quality forgery created within a machine? Even before we get there, we will need to tackle the question of whether a created machine can be granted the civil rights normally associated with an adult human, at all..

And then, what would a twice removed or twice updated human being life's be worth? Will we treat them with the same respect and rights as a First born?

Considering that this technology would most likely come first to the extremely wealthy, I expect that the answers will swiftly either become (a) "yes" or (b) "no, and it sucks to be a meatbag commoners."

This is not an ethicist making this case, this is a lawyer who wants his cut.

That's not to say that the ivory tower academics (read: sociologist and other useless fields masquerading as a science) won't eventually put this in the spotlight of their shitty post-modern papers and circlejerk about how it's causing divisions in society and blah blah blah, but luckily, no one ever listens to them.

More important than idiot ethicists standing in the way is the "more than a decade" for approval in the west. As opposed to what? Hundreds of thousands dying each year for lack of organs?

Hundreds of thousands dying from poorly made organs. Possibly in very bad ways and after spending hundreds of thousands or millions for them and being given false hope.

The FDA doesn't exist just to dangle perfect cures above people's heads and cackle as they die frustrated. It exists to keep bad products that can kill people who are relying on them to save them from reaching the market. The FDA has guidelines for allowing some experimental treatments when there are no alternatives, but when there are, it